Birdsong and car alarms

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

You know that really annoying multi-tone sound that some car alarms make? The one that goes WEEE-oooh WEEE-oooh WEEE-oooh WEEE-oooh WEEE-oooh WEEE-oooh, tschyoo-tschyoo tschyoo-tschyoo tschyoo-tschyoo tschyoo-tschyoo tschyoo-tschyoo tschyoo-tschyoo tschyoo-tschyoo, BYyooo BYyooo BYyooo BYyooo BYyooo, Boooo-eeeep, Boooo-eeeep, hhrrrkkkk hhrrrkkkk hhrrrkkkk hhrrrkkkk hhrrrkkkk hhrrrkkkk, WEEE-oooh WEEE-oooh WEEE-oooh etc. – that one.

For the last few days, a bird in a tree outside my window has been singing that exact same tone, over and over again. I swear, I’m not on anything!

2

I think some birds – think mockingbird/catbird family – are capable of learning and repeating sounds much like parrots. I used to hear one close by who ran through a litany of vastly different sounds in the night, and one of them was just like a VW horn. I heard it enough times and from the right direction that I’m pretty sure it was the bird, not a VW.

3

Yeah, Northern mockingbirds mimic various environmental sounds, from other bird calls to car alarms.

The real champ at this is the Superb lyrebird from south eastern Australia. See?

4

Yeah, mockingbirds can and do do that. They are remarkable mimics. I once heard one from about 30 yards making the sound of a distant raptor like an eagle, complete with echoes.

5

That’s pretty amazing.

But it makes me wonder, how does that type of mimicry confer an evolutionary advantage? Unless the bird knows something I don’t, that car ain’t puttin’ out.

6

He’s doing it for the females (and other males) in the area. The larger the repertoire of sounds, the higher on the ladder he is. At the University of Florida football field, I’d often hear them imitating the referees’ whistles…

7

Don’t recall what they are but Beaumont, Texas, has an entire flock that sounds like car alarms. Very weird when I first visited there.

8

One that lived outside my college apartment sounded like a rusty gate.